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China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

bloomberg.com

171–180 of 270 posts

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's because they use cheap oil that tends to be really, really dirty when burned.

I don't think that could be a full explanation. Perfectly clean burning turns all of the carbon atoms in the fuel into carbon dioxide. [hydrocarbons] + O2 -> CO2 + H2O "Dirtier" burning would result in less CO2 emission.

There are worse things in cigarettes than nicotine. In a similar way there are worse things in bunker fuel than hydrocarbons.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#172
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by your point. "Intact Forest Landscapes" seems to exclude any human made forest. So are you against all human planting of forests?

I was providing data for your > I doubt theres a forest in Europe that hasn't been touched by man.

Sorry, I thought you were providing your definition of natural forest

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#173
post #129

What's the advantage compared to a tram or trolley bus? I don't get it.

No need to build and maintain the infrastructure (rail and overhead power lines.) The ability to navigate the road freely -- trolley buses often have trouble circumnavigating badly parked cars in their way, sometimes causing the driver to get out to reattach the "prongs" to the wires. Also, trams are somewhat prone to "tram jams" caused by one faulty streetcar blocking the railway. And they simply cannot get around a…

Other than the need to maintain rail + power lines, I think these issues are overblown. The badly parked car scenario sounds pretty horrendous in theory - one careless actor causes chaos for an entire city center! In my experience it simply doesn't happen - I think people just know how damaging it could be (and possibly how much trouble they would be in) that they pretty much have to be considerate and self-aware.

However I have seen trams broken down temporarily (a couple of times in the last 7 years of taking 2 trips daily) but these get resolved surprisingly quickly with minimal fuss. Additionally I've only seen a Trolley lose its connection a couple of times, and the resolution took about 1 minute.

This is of course heavily based on personal experience, if you have experience to the contrary I'd be curious where this is. A friend complained a bit about Trolleys in Wellington needing frequently reconnected, but I don't know how common that is or whether they just had some bad luck

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#174
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the price were to include a carbon tax, it would likely be at least ten times higher and we would very quickly get rid of our beloved gas guzzlers. Wouldn't you expect a carbon tax to be similar in price to the cost to get the carbon back out of the air? CO2 released per barrel of oil (when converted to various fuels and burned) appears to be around 300-450 kg [1][2], but we can round up to 500 kg to be conservat…

The thing is, if you wait long enough, CO2 will be removed by the plant life anyway so removing it is "free". However if you reflect the price of the removal process which is as _fast_ as it is emitted to the consumer, someone gonna pay through the nose...

Plants release carbon when they rot or are otherwise eaten. So they're only a temporary carbon store.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#175
post #58

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

It’s a pretty well documented observation that the birth rate in prosperous nations tends to level out without intervention. Additionally, prosperous nations are responsible for orders of magnitude more per capita carbon emissions than the “global south.” Is your plan to depopulate the wealthy countries responsible for CO2 emissions who already have a replacement level birthrate? Or is it to artificially prevent popu…

Morals, meet realpolitik. I'm not writing this to justify the latter, just to point out that morals often come second to raw pursuit of power.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#176

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

I completely agree with you. Firstly, it's inevitable that those in developing countries are going to aspire to western lifestyles and that corporations will seek to exploit these markets, thus any argument about the solution being mainly about changing the developed world is flawed. Secondly, we are told that those in the developing world will suffer most from climate change, and thus by not moderating fertility in the developing world we are actually by default causing more suffering. Unless that is, we let them all migrate to the developed world, where they will all adopt western lifestyles, and so we are back to the same problem. It's difficult to take the moral argument against controlling fertility in the developing world seriously (and not think ulterior motives are at play) when said argument falls apart under even a simple analysis. (Supposed) moralists apparently care little about either people or the planet.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#177
post #25

Now they need to get off coal as the source of much of that electricity. I’m not saying they won’t though... I’m pretty sure they are onboard with both cleaning up their environment, and limiting their CO2 emissions.

China is actually running nuclear AP1000 reactors: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/nuclear-shares-soar-china-plans-11... . It seems serious about nuclear power, unlike the U.S.

The US' main problem with nuclear waste is that they still don't have a place to stash it; waste is building up at the nuclear plants and it's becoming a huge risk.

Whereas China can just dig a storage facility in the desert or something; they can disregard locals' complaints easily thanks to being a totalitarian state. I mean so is the US but it's an ineffective one.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#178
post #41

Excuse me for this tangent, but when it comes to environmental concerns, why do we still skirt around the largest elephant in the room? Curbing population growth. We have laws against almost every "natural human instinct/desire": X Murder X Rape X Theft, even if you're stealing food when you're starving X Taking shelter in property that you don't own, even if you were freezing to death X In some countries: Being with…

I agree. We need to not only stop using polluting vehicles, but also reduce the number of people consuming products. Honestly, the problem is going to solve itself. We're going to see devastating natural disasters and famines. We're going to see causalities like we've never seen. We're going to see massive die-offs of the poor in countries that are in the direct path- coastal countries, Africa, and middle east. I kno…

Basically if we don't control immigration, the developed world will look like the developing world, and then there will be no more developed world to help out. I think for some this is the intended endgame.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#179
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth of the economy to what end? What is the endgame? What will conjure up the constant resources and space required for the constant growth required by the economy?

>What will conjure up the constant resources Probably the sun and small scale fusion for at least the next thousand years or so. Eventually other stars/large scale fusion/some type of energy production we haven't discovered yet. >and space There is enormous amounts of room left on earth. Everyone on earth could have an acre of land to themselves with 10x the current population, and that completely ignores multi-level…

> There is enormous amounts of room left on earth.

Bonkers - if we are to believe the environmental lobby (and I generally do), we are already destroying much of the biosphere. You can't have it both ways! Either things get worse for everyone, or humanity starts to control itself.

Re: China's e-buses dent oil demand more than electric cars do

#180
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should celebrate what makes things available to everyone, not just to rich clients. Tesla is still far away from selling cars to everyone.

Why? Are poor people immune to the pollution emitted by a rich person's ICE vehicle? Even if we assume a fully fossil power generation grid, at least the inhabitants of the same city are not breathing as much crap, and that's a huge plus.

sure, I am just saying the benefits would be much higher if you had more electric cars used by everyone instead of just 1 percent of the market.
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